Toshiba Planning to Sell its Image Sensor Manufacturing Plant to Sony

Published By : 28 Oct 2015 |Published By : QYRESEARCH

The global semiconductor industry is a dynamic one that is marked with many mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and joint ventures. The global semiconductor market is very competitive in nature. Players in the global semiconductor market are always competing among themselves in terms of innovation. Generally, all the mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships in this industry take place in order to drive innovation.

However, another trend that has surfaced in which companies are selling their unprofitable businesses. Toshiba Corp from Japan announced on Wednesday that it is planning to sell its image sensor business soon to Sony Corp. This will be undertaken by Toshiba Corp in order to overhaul their unprofitable semiconductor businesses as they work to recover from the big accounting scandal that was estimated at US$1.3 billion.

The firm said they will be selling their image sensor manufacturing plant based in Oita, which lies in the South of Japan. This plant will be sold to Sony by the fiscal year through March and Toshiba will pull out of the sensor business. These details were given by the firm in a joint statement. Sony is planning to take on the sensor business and will also take over Toshiba’s 1100 workers.

This deal is estimated around 20 billion yen that is US$166.15 million according to a source having the knowledge of the matter. However, this has not yet been disclosed by both the firms publicly.

According to Toshiba, it will withdraw from the white LED business that is part of its semiconductor division. According to Toshiba, they have overstated earnings in a broad range of businesses such as personal computers, television sets, and chips. The acquisition of this manufacturing plant of Toshiba will further solidify its dominant position in the semiconductor industry. At present, Sony controls around 40% of the global market for CMOS image sensors, which are a kind of integrated circuit converting light into electrical signals.